Lost Girls
by xo going nowhere
Summary: In that moment, they all stood to lose something.


_For the girlies who keep me from being lost myself._

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_**Lost Girls**_

When they ask her how she is, she's not really prepared for the sudden bouts of nausea that sweep through her. It happens every time, but it still takes her by surprise at how suddenly, violently ill it makes her feel. It pushes the food that Karen's all but shoved down her throat right back towards where it came from, and it takes all of Haley's effort to keep it down. If she can focus on that, on anything, it will keep her from thinking about where her mind tends to stray. Nathan. It's not an unfamiliar location for her thoughts, because he's been primarily occupying them since the first time he approached her in the tutoring center. But now it's different, because her thoughts are of Nathan lying helpless in the hospital bed.

She's not thinking of him only thirty feet away, hooked up to various machines. They beep assumingly, struggling as hard as he is to keep him alive. They seem to think it's their right to make as much noise as possible, regardless of how silent everyone around is being. Haley's grateful for them though, because they do their best to fill in the empty spaces.

Her mind isn't on today though. It's safe to say now that her wedding day is ruined, perfect as it began, when the limo took a dive off the bridge, closely followed by her husband. Her honeymoon is destroyed too, but that's not what bothers her. All she can think of is one year ago, when Nathan was last in surgery. She was far from the waiting room then. The guilt overwhelms her. It crushes her, and in her mind, it's been transformed from a metaphor to something literal and tangible, pressing down upon her until she can barely breathe.

All the people surrounding her were here last time. She knows this, and she looks at their faces from time to time. She can see it in the déjà vu flashing through Brooke's eyes as she rocks slightly in her chair, and the anxiety etched on Peyton's face as she leans against the wall. The two girls aren't sitting together, and she hasn't a clue why, and the guilt piles on. If she were a better friend, she would know. The anxiety provides her yet another distraction. She can't walk over to either of the girls. They're her bridesmaids, her best friends, but she can't bridge that gap. Haley knows now that she's shoved them aside, and even though they'd welcome her with open arms and consoling words, there's a distance between them that she feels acutely.

So for now, she'll keep playing games in her mind, recalling the greatest moments of her relationship with the love of her life, and hoping the machines will do their thing, so she can keep being the love of his. The hard plastic against her back will have to substitute for Nathan's arms wrapped around her, as she prays that he'll make it through, and pretends that she's not completely powerless. Nathan doesn't need her for this, even though they'd promised to share everything. He's done it once before, and he did it when she'd left him all alone. In this moment, she stands to lose everything.

* * *

The fluorescent lighting in the room is harsh, and it makes a buzzing noise that is slowly driving Brooke out of her mind. She's pretty sure that when she dies, this noise will still be ringing in her ears, eating away at her until there's nothing left. No one is talking and nobody's laughing, and it seems that all memories of a wedding reception are years in the past. Everyone's eyes rest on the door to the operating room—except Brooke. She stares at her dress, at its vibrancy, and wants to sink into the floor for how out of place she feels. It's cute, and it's bright, and it has no right to be either at a time like this. And so she dashes to her car, running at breakneck speed and almost hoping that it will live up to it's name. Anything is better than the agony of waiting.

Instead, she arrives there, and finds she doesn't know what to wear. Pink seems wildly inappropriate, and black too ominous. She figures that there's really no appropriate dress, because when one of your best friends is on an operating table, most people don't really give a damn. But Brooke can't focus on how shattered her heart is, not when there were so many bigger things hanging in the balance than her relationship with Lucas. So now, she'll find the right clothes, and she'll accessorize, and then she'll go back to the waiting room and see if there's anything she can do. But first, she's going to wipe off her lipstick, because it seems too bright now, and it almost makes her face look happy. Haley and Nathan were the ones with the right to happiness today, and if they don't get it, nobody else is.

When Brooke arrives back in the waiting room, everyone glances up at her for a split second before returning to their own anxious thoughts. Haley sits in a little plastic chair, still in full wedding attire, the dress Brooke worked so hard to make pooling around her feet. She frowned at the dust on the floor, as it gathered on the lace. Couldn't it see it was marring perfection? This whole damn day was like that.

She can feel Luke's eyes on her, but she doesn't meet them. She won't encourage him to come closer to her. She feels like that's all she's been doing for the longest time, and closer is never close enough. He'll never just let her all the way in, and she'll never stop pushing him away, and neither of them will ever fully cut Peyton out. It can never work, but she can never call it off. Brooke loves Lucas, even if it damns them both.

But even though she loves him, and she wants him, and she needs him, and she wishes for once he would be the one to save her, she's not blind. She doesn't miss the way his eyes linger on Peyton, or even the concerned glances he's tossing between the both of them. She wishes like hell that she could just write them off as him being a friend, but she knows that there's been more between them, and there may always be. She can't though, so all she can do is wait. In this moment, she stands to lose everything. Casting a look at Peyton, her best friend since forever, and thinking of their relationship that had gone down in so many flames, she can't help but wonder if she already has.

* * *

Her wide hazel eyes have zeroed in on the wall opposite her, and they haven't moved in over fifteen minutes. Peyton had noticed, almost nine years ago, that that exact spot wasn't quite as staunchly white as the rest of the wall, and she remembers that even then, she was wondering what had happened to discolor it. She'd stood in that very spot, as the doctors operated on her mother behind the doors where they now held Nathan.

Brooke was there then too, the only one of her "friends" who'd bothered to come. She was sitting so much closer then though, holding her hand, and holding her together. Now Brooke sits seven chairs down, but it feels like so many more. Peyton knows that this is her fault, that if she'd just kept her mouth shut, the brunette would be as close as she once sat. Honesty is never the best policy in matters of the heart, and especially not in matters of three hearts. She's learned this the hard way, and the sting of the slap Brooke delivered only reinforces it.

Peyton really does wonder if the silence is stealing her sanity, because she doesn't feel fully there. She can't see Nathan at the wedding, handsome and grown in his tux. She sees him in his first varsity basketball game, the only freshman to ever make the team. She sees him beside his falsely beaming father, having praise showered upon the both of them at the annual sports events. Even when he was an insufferable asshole, he was sturdy and ever-present. Nathan Scott had always seemed to be invincible on a level, and so she can't wrap her head around the fact that it's him they're waiting around for.

Instead, she feels like she's waiting for her mother. She feels young and naïve again, before she began hurting everyone around her and breaking her own heart in the process. She focuses on that discolored paint, and wonders what she can do to fix it. Why won't they just paint the damn hospital? Maybe with the right color, it would stop seeming so dreary in there. The people felt bad enough, agonizing over the hand life would deal them-- they didn't need help from the décor. Even something soft and unassuming, like a pretty blue, would be a welcome change. Peyton has always used art as an escape, so why couldn't it work for other people?

She knows exactly why. Because when she was done with her painting, no matter how poignant or meaningful it was, it was still only a painting. It never healed her scars, or filled in the holes in her heart. Even if the hospital was redecorated, it wouldn't change the outcome of what went on inside. They were all just distractions. She looked at Lucas, and thought of Jake. So were they.

When her eyes strayed away from the paint, they always landed on Brooke, and she had the need to build a time machine. She needed the last few days to just not happen. She needed her Brookie, and she needed Nathan to be happy and okay. She realizes now that family is all that matters, and that her friends were the closest thing she'd ever have, and that it had been shot to hell now. All she does is stare at the paint, because she knows that she's already lost it all.


End file.
